In difficult times and in challenging relationships, do you label others as the enemy? Join Polly Young-Eisendrath to discover how to work with your shadow energies and projections.

How is it going in your relationships? Are you relating to and speaking with all of the people you love? Are you able to solve problems and conflicts with others? If it’s hard for you to avoid blaming someone, if you disavow your own aggressive motives and project them onto others, you’re not alone. Everybody does this. It’s possible, though, to free yourself from projecting your shadow (the unconscious parts of yourself that you repress) onto those you perceive as enemies. Drawing on Jungian theory and other models, Polly will discuss identity, belonging, “othering” and family patterns rooted in the need for a scapegoat, and how you can “befriend your enemies.” Polly will provide insight into “enemy-making factors” and discuss how to develop compassion for these factors in all humans and create mindful space between your cherished “self” and threatening “others” in your relationships.

Polly Young-Eisendrath, Ph.D., is a Jungian analyst, psychologist, and psychotherapist in private practice. She is Clinical Associate Professor of Psychiatry at the University of Vermont and the founder and director of the Institute for Dialogue Therapy. She is past president of the Vermont Association for Psychoanalytic Studies and a founding member of the Vermont Institute for the Psychotherapies. Polly is also the chairperson of Enlightening Conversations, a series of conversational conferences which bring together participants from the front lines of Buddhism and psychoanalysis. Polly has published sixteen books, as well as many chapters and articles, that have been translated into more than twenty languages, including The Self-Esteem Trap: Raising Confident and Compassionate Kids in an Age of Self-Importance and Love Between Equals: Relationship as a Spiritual Path. www.young-eisendrath.com